When it comes to plane seats do you swap or not swap? The debate has fiercely divided the internet, but one mum thinks she had cracked the code.
Typically the plane seat debate centres around mothers or families with young children who ask people to swap their plane seat so their family can be together.
In some instances the passengers being asked to move have paid more for that seat and refuse.
What is also commonplace in these stories is mothers or families getting very angry or frustrated when the person asked to move says no.
But should they have planned ahead and paid to book seats together? Or if they did but there were none left, can they really ask someone to move to a worse seat?
Well mum-of-two and TikToker Anna Lyn Cook has revealed just how you should ask someone to switch seats, and her explainer video has been viewed over 1.2 million times.
Her approach is all about making sure there’s a benefit for the person swapping, such as extra legroom… and the joy of not having to sit next to children for their flight.
Anna said in her video: ‘When we booked this flight, it wouldn’t let us select our seats for some reason, so my family wasn’t sitting together.
‘When we got to the gate, we tried to get them to see if they could move us around and they couldn’t.’
She showed her seat which had plenty of legroom and then showed the seat she wanted to change to, which was quite tight.
She added that the stranger looked very apprehensive when he realised he was sitting in a row with young children.
‘The guy who was sitting in the seat came, he was looking at the seat putting his bag up. You could kind of see his face, he was like, “I’m sitting here with all these kids?”‘ she said.
‘I was like, “Hey do you want to switch seats?” I was like, “This is my seat, it has more leg room.” He was like [thumbs up]. He was so down. Everybody wins.’
When captioning the video Anna made her stance on seat swapping very clear.
She said: ‘I would never ask anyone to switch seats unless I could offer them a better option. If they didn’t want to, I’d happily except that.
‘Also – we ALWAYS pay extra to select our seats if we have the option. But sometimes things happen and it doesn’t work out. This guy was so nice and it was a win/win.’
The comments were full of praise for Anna approaching the issue in the right way.
One user said: ‘See, THIS is the way. Always offer to swap for the better or more forward seats.’
‘I would gladly switch a seat for something comparable or better. However, I will never downgrade,’ said another.
But some don’t always have the tact that Anna did, with a Reddit user who goes by Bratster22 getting some backlash in October because of a post about a situation he had on board a 10-hour flight from Europe to Asia with his wife.
He explained that he was asked to give up his pre-selected front row seat for one in the second row with less legroom so that a family could sit together -and he said no.
The user wrote: ‘We booked our tickets well in advance and also managed to book the specific seats we wanted – two seats in the first row.
‘We paid for these seats as it was going to be a long journey and wanted the extra leg space.
‘When we boarded, there was a woman holding a baby sitting in the middle seat.
‘This woman, before I even had a chance to put my bag in the overhead compartment, asked me “Can I be really cheeky and ask you to switch seats with my husband?”
‘She then pointed toward her husband sitting in the second row (only the first row has extra leg space and requires additional payment to book the seat). She then told me that her husband needs to be next to her to help with the baby.
‘I politely but firmly told her that unfortunately as his seat is in a second row, I wouldn’t be moving there as I had specifically paid for the seat with extra legroom.’
The Reddit user said the mum was furious at his response and called over a flight attendant to force him to move.
The situation was eventually resolved but the internet was divided, and the mum certainly hadn’t followed Anna’s blueprint of offering a better seat and accepting the outcome.
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